There is a significant amount of research on how being overtly overweight or obese negatively impacts one’s hireability. But the lack of literature on how marginal increases in weight gain, within a medically-healthy BMI impacts a candidate’s chances of being hired prompted a collaborative research between academics from the University of Strathclyde and University of St Andrews in the UK and the University of Toronto in Canada. And the results, according to the researchers, are “deeply unsettling” – women face weight-based prejudice in the workplace even when their body mass index (BMI) is within the healthy range. Informs professor Dennis Nickson, the lead researcher, based at Strathclyde’s department of human resource management, “Work that I have done with colleagues over many years has looked at how service organisations often look to recruit a particular ‘look’ in support of their corporate image. This research, therefore, looks at both customer-facing and non-customer facing roles in the service sector, finding that whilst there was discrimination against both men and women, it was particularly pronounced for women and especially for those applying for a customer-facing position.”

The research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, was carried out in partnership with University of St Andrews academics Andrew Timming and professor David Perrett – of The Perception Lab – and the University of Toronto’s Daniel Re. In the study, 120 participants were asked to rate eight pictures of men and women for their suitability for customer-facing as well as non-customer facing roles in the service sector based on their appearance. Adds Nickson, “The participant profile was equally split between men and women, with an average age of 25.67 years. They were told that applicants were equally-qualified and were shown faces that reflected a ‘normal’ weight and a subtle ‘heavier’ face. We also had a series of ‘diversionary’ faces so it was not clear to the participants that the study was about weight. Interestingly, the sex of the participants in the research was not significant in the evaluations of the photographs.”

“The findings raise a number of practical implications, both ethically and from a business point of view. Ethically, the results of the study are deeply-unsettling from the viewpoint of gender inequality in the workplace, highlighting the unrealistic challenges women face against societal expectations of how they should look as well as and in a highly weight-conscious labour market. From a business point of view, we would argue that employers should consciously work against such prejudice and bias by providing sensitivity training for those responsible for recruitment.”

The study argues that, since weight is not a protected characteristic in that it is not included in legislation which seeks to protect individuals from discrimination based on personal characteristics and there is no legal means to combat such prejudice, the onus should not be on individuals who are perfectly healthy but not ‘thin’. Concludes Nickson, “It is very difficult at an individual level to combat such negative stereotypes beyond making the obvious point that they are within a perfectly-healthy weight range. Instead, in an employment context, organisations can think about things like their marketing and branding strategies and, of course, seek to educate hiring managers about how they may be biased against heavier people. This bias could be unconscious. Including weight in things like diversity training could be an important first step in educating managers about the need to recognise and act on potential bias towards job applicants who are not ‘normal’ weight.”